The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is the standard technique used by an HTTP server to execute a program that generates HTML output. Using CGI, you can run PL/SQL, and thus interface to the Oracle7 Server, from Internet servers that do not support the WRB. This technique provides dynamic content rather than static content from files on disk. Oracle WebServer is fully compliant with CGI version 1.1.
When the Web Listener recognizes an incoming URL as a request to execute a CGI application, it spawns a separate process to perform the operation (The Web Request Broker (WRB) circumvents this need to spawn a new process for each request, thereby improving performance). The Web Listener passes the URL to the process it spawned and maintains communication with it through standard input and output. Therefore, the CGI process can get the input it needs from the URL itself and/or the standard input. It sends its output back to the Listener through the standard output, and the Listener transmits it in turn to the client's Web browser.
The fact that CGI applications spawn a new process each time they are used is costly in terms of performance. For this among other reasons, Oracle recommends that you use the WRB instead.
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This document was last modified at 07:32pm PDT on April 29, 1996.
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